The girl, contraceptives and the uncle 2

I was home at the weekend when one of my protegees Sophie showed up with a new friend of hers Ebiere(not real names... you know why)looking very depressed. I offered food-she lives with an aunty- in the course of the lunch the story poured out. I'll try to summarise. Sophie stays with an aunty who has conveniently forgotten what it is like to be a teenager, does not communicate with her but feels better reporting Sophie to all who care to listen including me about Sophie's waywardness and stubbornness. Meanwhile, Sophie is going through lots of changes hormonally, physically...She is in Junior Secondary class 3 with a body of a vixen and as a result, many 'uncles' have become very nice and kind to her especially in the neighbourhood where they live. Sophie has already had sex with her neighbour uncle because he is very nice and helps with school work especially when she repeated a class. she doesn't really consider it a big deal since she's been doing it with him since junior secondary 1. The Thursday before in school, another friend of hers where she goes to make her hair had invited her over to go see her 'uncle' friend, when she got there, while waiting for the friend, the uncle raped her and later informed her that that was her friend's business(she supplies girls from school to 'uncles'), now Sophie is worried about being pregnant because he was rough. And of course the big question came "what should I do?" As they both looked at me like I had answers to the world's problems I had to use the excuse of eating to think. So many thoughts were racing through my mind...the fact that she wasn't concerned about a venereal disease, HIV/AIDS.. but just pregnancy,  the 'uncles' she was sleeping with steadily and gently did they use condoms? Sophie just turned sixteen meaning she's been sexually active since fourteen. Telling her she was too young to have sex because it's wrong and because she cannot handle the consequences will be crying over spilt milk, also won't telling her about contraceptives be encouraging her?..I ate for a long time...

The girl, Contraceptives and the Uncle 1

I became a counselor not willingly but by serendipity. I just discovered that younger girls seemed to gravitate towards me, I have lots of younger cousins who in turn have lots of friends.... At first I resisted it but then I thought why not? If I could do some good with it, why not?
As a senior friend to my younger friends I get to hear lots of stories and get to offer advices. I found that my younger friends would rather tell me about their escapades than their parents. Most of the stories seemed to rotate around "Uncles". Now, in secondary school we were taught in social studies about family nuclear and extended with the nuclear family consisting of  parents and children while the extended has the parents and children with their close relatives sometimes living in close proximity. The operative word here is 'close relative'. However, in recent times the words 'uncles' and 'aunties' have been used loosely to include even none relatives not to talk of close ones. These days, anyone can be an 'uncle'; teacher, neighbour, brother's friend, father's friend,driver, gate-man you name it., the concept of a stranger seems to be lost .Barriers that should somewhat be a protection for a young girl is removed with that single word and with it gone, a lot of harm has been perpetrated by these 'uncles' and 'aunties'